With the MLB Draft just about a month away, Ben Cherington addressed the rumblings regarding the Pirates for the 2025 deadline and what the approach is going to be.
The Pirates name has come up a lot from the National Media in regards to being sellers at the trade deadline. Cherington said that he talks to the players that could possibly get moved to keep them up to date with what is going on.
"I do the best I can to stay in touch with the players on our team who might be in that speculation. I have started a little bit of that and will do more of that here in the coming weeks," said Cherington.
He said that he believes the group of players in the clubhouse and in the organization are capable of winning more games, but they're not delievering.
"You can go back to last August, we're not winning enough games. We're not delivering at the level we need to. So we have to be honest about that and find solutions to that. The next five weeks will bring opportunities that we can use to our advantage. I think what that means is we have to go into this openminded," said Cherington.
The Pirates currently sit at 33-50 and are 15.5 games out of first place in the Central. That doesn't mean though that they have to look at Major League Baseball ready now players.
"If we happen to make a trade where the return is a younger player, I wouldn't read anything into that in terms of how motivated we are right now to win games faster. The focus will be to win games as fast as we can."
With the Pirates having pitching depth and struggling offensively, they could look to move some of the pitching but Cherington cautions that you only have the depth until you don't anymore.
"I expect we will keep being asked about it. I think we want to be careful. When you don't have the depth anymore it's hard to build it back."
He also said that generally don't try to avoid dealing trades within the division.
With the deadline being a month away, teams are already having conversations he said.
"There are definitely a lot of teams that are still in that feeling out process, so we don't have a perfect picture across the league where everyone is, but we have started the phone calls."